Editorial: Lending a hand to our homeless vets

California's military men and women who have spent much of the last week worrying about the toll the government shutdown will have on them got a bit of good news last week.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that will let voters decide whether to provide $600 million for veterans trying to get on their feet.

He should be saluted for doing what we suggest he do last month.

We got a good idea of how many veterans need help from Dixon's North Bay Stand Down held this past week. For the past three days, 260 veterans in need got aid at the event, from a hot meal to a health checkup to information on veterans benefits and myriad treatment programs to how to apply for other types of assistance.

A number of Yolo County people helped out during the event, which demonstrated just how many veterans need some sort of assistance.

Voters had already approved $1.4 million in bonds to help veterans -- many coming home from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those funds could only be used to purchase single-family homes or farms.

Turns out the money sat mostly unused because mortgage rates on the open market were cheaper than those offered by the Veterans Affairs Department.

Now voters will rightly get a chance to decide whether to repurpose those funds and make housing available to the most needy. But the bill authored by Assembly Speaker John A. Perez could also wind up costing $25 million annually. It's an amount proponents of the bill say will pay for itself by taking veterans off the street and putting them in facilities where they will get care and job leads before they wind up needing other expensive services.

California voters have long shown sympathy for those who served our country, now they will at least get a chance to consider one way to correct an inefficient program. That's better than letting millions intended for veterans sit idle.